Sample poems for Lecture/Demonstration

THE GUPPY
by Odgen Nash

Whales have calves,
Cats have kittens,
Bears have cubs,
Bats have bittens,
Swans have cygnets,
Seals have puppies,
But guppies just have
little guppies.




WAS SHE A WITCH?
by Laura Richards


There was an old woman
Lived down in a dell;
She used to draw picklejacks
Out of the well.
How did she do it?
Nobody knew it,
She never, no never,
no never would tell.

INCIDENT
by Countee Cullen

Once, riding in Old Baltimore,
Heart filled, head filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled. But he poked out
His tongue and called me, "Nigger."
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December.
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.

FOG
by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

 

 

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

by Wilfred Owen 

Bent double, like beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,          
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant sleep began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

 

 

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon we flung him in,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Note: The latin phrase
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
translates loosely to:

"How fitting and glorious it is to die for one's country"